


The Rolling Ocean

by doctor_jasley



Category: Jaws (Movies), Jaws 4: The Revenge
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 03:16:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/339267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctor_jasley/pseuds/doctor_jasley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sleepless nights plague Ellen a lot lately and she's come to an understanding with them. She just wishes sometimes she could get past the sadness that wants to eat her alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rolling Ocean

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for 2010's H/C Bingo challenge on DW. There's also canon mentioning of character deaths(Martin and Sean). I do not own the Jaws franchise

It’s too early to be awake, especially at her age. Ellen can’t sleep. Not that she hasn’t gotten used to it by now. She hasn’t sleep well since Martin died. Heart attack her ass. More like the stress of living in Amity and having to deal with the fear of another damn shark had finally swallowed him whole. Finishing the job that the fucking sharks couldn’t all those years before. She misses her husband the most when she can’t sleep. He could be distant at times but that was to be expected, more so after what happened when Michael and Sean were younger. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a good husband, or that he wasn’t emotionally invested in her and the family, because he was. Usually if she couldn’t sleep it’d end up waking him up too and they’d just lie in bed together staring at the ceiling in companionable silence until sleep finally washed over them. Now that happens less and less.

It’s winter and she should be happy because Sean’s got a stable job with the sheriff’s office and he’s going to marry tiffany, who really is a sweet girl. She just worries. It gets worse the later it gets. Her sleeplessness doesn’t help her worry. Sometimes she wishes her youngest hadn’t followed in his father’s footsteps. Don’t get her wrong, she’s proud as hell of him, but she worries. She worries about both her sons and their families. That’s what mothers do. They worry themselves to death over the well being of their children.

Christmas gets closer and closer, and the island’s ramping up for the holiday. Sean and Tiffany are a cute couple and Christmas shopping goes well. There are plans to be made over how Christmas is going to be spent with Michael and his family. Ellen really wants to see her grand daughter. Thea’s a precious little girl and not for the first time does she wish Martin could have had more time with her. 

When she finds out Sean’s dead it doesn’t surprise her. She’d had another sleepless night and she should be broken on the ground. Because ‘Her Son Is Dead’. And in ways she is and it hurts like hell, but Tiffany needs the support. So she gives it the best she can until Michael and his family can show up. After the funeral tiffany goes back to live with her parents and Ellen’s at loose ends.

Her chest hurts so badly and she wishes and prays to god that she could have Sean back in front of her again. He didn’t get to live long enough. Why is it that the ocean hates her? First her husband and now her youngest, it makes her want to rage and put up one hell of a fight. Instead she follows her oldest to the Bahamas to stay with them for awhile.

The good thing about the Bahamas, isn’t the heat or the crystal clear water – in fact she’s paranoid and still grief weary enough to be skeptical and afraid of the water here even if Michael claims for a fact that Great Whites don’t like tropical Bahaman water – it’s that she gets to see her oldest son more and her granddaughter. She loves Thea a hell of a lot.

She has good days and really bad days. But mostly she has in between days. It’s turning out to be one of those in between days, until she walks into the kitchen and watches her oldest play mimic with Thea at the kitchen table. Without any help at all, her mind supplies her with a memory from long ago. A very young Sean sitting at their kitchen table watching Martin and mimicking everything he saw his father do. Suddenly her in between day’s smashed into a terribly awful bad day and she can’t keep herself from being pulled under by the grief and sadness.

Eventually, she can’t handle it any longer. Just staying cooped up being sad is counterproductive, so the next time she’s able to leave, she does. It means she ends up running into an older British gentleman, who just happens to be the pilot who carried them to the island. He remembers her and ends up dragging her all around the island sight-seeing. She has fun. He flirts shamelessly with her and it should turn her off, because even though she’s been a widow some years now she still thinks of Martin as her husband. But it really doesn’t, and instead it makes her smile wider than she has in awhile. She might have even laughed once or twice during the day. She doesn’t laugh nearly enough anymore.

After that it seems like she spends all her free time either with Thea or Hoagie. Sometimes with Thea she’ll get that terrible dread in her chest and her paranoia will creep up and rear its ugly head. It even happens with Hoagie a time or two. The only difference is that he understands on a more adult level and can find ways of distracting her that still extracts a smile from her face.

If Michael were to ask her if she were still grieving, she’d probably answer yes. No mother ever really gets over the loss of one of their children. And Martin was such a huge part of her life for such a long time. She still loves him so damn much. But if she continues to grieve with no sense of trying to continue on, then she’ll die of a broken heart. There’s no way in hell she’s giving up another life to the memory of those damn sharks. Her grand daughter deserves to have her grandmother around for as long as possible. If Hoagie helps her smile and genuinely likes her and her company, she doesn’t see any reason to not continue spending time with him. Martin would never hold it against her. In the end all he’d want is for her to be happy. And she’s happy. Well, happier than she’s been in a long time and it’s really mostly to do with Hoagie. So yeah she thinks she might stay around for awhile and see what happens.


End file.
